On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 11:07 AM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 May 2010 10:51:37 am Gabe Rubin wrote:
> > On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> > > On Thursday 20 May 2010 10:40:09 am Scott Alfter wrote:
> > >> so that the iPhone can serve as
> > >> a "poor man's frontend" (in the sense that I already have one and don't
> > >> need to buy more hardware) for an old non-HD CRT TV.
I think we all agree that having broad platform/device coverage for
mythtv frontends is a good thing.
Now that there's a native client for Linux/UNIX, Mac OSX, and Windows,
the remaining unfilled gap for frontend functionality seems to be
mobile.
> > Show me an all-in-one device with a touch screen and everything
> > integrated that has the potential (potential being the key word) to be
> > a myth frontend for around $500 or less.
Agreed. The iPad is a cool piece of hardware. I may not love the rules
they have for app developers, but I can see some of the benefits and I
can see the mass appeal of an iPad that Ubuntu running on a JooJoo
just will never have. Net result is thousands of cool applications
that people are actually willing to pay money for that run on the
iPhone OS. Don't get me wrong, I'll have a linux tablet when there's
one like the iPad available for cheaper and I expect it to do the
things Linux does really well...
> Myth is not really designed for touch screens, so that's the part that would
> be problematical
yes. iPad has gotten me rethinking what a frontend for mythtv should
be. It would be a heck of a lot cleaner and simpler to just use a
Linux touchscreen tablet as a display for rooms where I don't need a
big TV. Gets rid of about 10 lbs of cables and wall warts. All I'd
need would be an IR receiver, but REALLY... I'd want to interact with
it by touch too, and occasionally by mouse as well. This means that
*SOMEONE* should be working on adding mouse/touch input the mythtv
interface to prepare a day when when linux touchscreen tablets are
plentiful and cheap.
Also, re: iPad and iPhone lack of flash... What i really want is
on-the-fly transcoding to h264 and a simple html5 based interface for
browsing recordings, launching, and transcoding on the fly to h264 so
that we could watch mythtv recordings on the iPhone, iPad, and just
about anything else that has a modern browser.
Seems like it shouldn't be that hard to use vlc or something else for
this and add some code to mythweb to do this. Aside from adding more
dependencies to mythtv, what's the downside of doing this? Even if it
were a separate plugin, it would be a big win for overall mythtv
usability in my opinion.
-Ross